Simple clear advice in plain English

Review: Virtual Disc Drive utility software

Store and play games on your PC without CD or DVD

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The appeal of Virtual Disc Drive is that of convenience. It allows you to play games or run programs without having the CD or DVD in the drive, but from the hard disk.

It does this by fooling the computer into thinking the place on the hard disk where the game is saved is in fact a CD or DVD drive.

The obvious worry here is that most games come with some form of copyright protection, meaning the CD must be in the drive to play it.

But Virtual Disc Drive works with, rather than against, copyright protection when saving the disc’s contents to the hard disk.

However, only games or programs using copyright protection compatible with the program will work.

You can check whether a game will work from the manufacturer’s website, but the list of compatible programs is limited.

It’s a shame, because Virtual Disc Drive works quickly and effectively, and is easy to set up.

It allows up to 23 virtual drives to be created and in theory to run this many programs at the same time without any of the discs being present.

However, thanks to the compatibility issue, the problem may be finding 23 such games.

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Our verdict

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Good points • Can store up to 23 games on a hard disk • Easy to use and setup • No need for DVD or CD game discs Bad points • Limited game compatibility Overall Virtual Disk Drive is a good concept but with limited list of compatible games, it's missing a trick.

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